My brother had a Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook. Windows XP home, SP1, prolly 2004-05.
One day we were listening to music on I-Tunes while driving home from Florida. The machine just shut down. Message said, "Beginning Dump of Physical Memory." I could not HANDLE or attempt to fix cuz I was driving. I tried to talk him through it. We tried to reboot in safe mode. Eventually got it working again. Worked for 1 hr and did the same thing. I could never get back up after that. I checked the BIOS and ran Diagnostics. Both sources said there was no Hard drive recognized. So, I went to ebay and bought a replacement HD with 120g. The first one only had 80g. When I received drive, I put it in the laptop. The BIOS still says there is no Hard Drive. The error message from the Diagnostics test was "Error Code: 0000-0141" Searching for this error says I need a new Hard Drive. But I already did that. It doesn't sound like the drive is spinning. Maybe there is not a good connection at the pins, or maybe the power supply is loose or faulty. When I get home from work today, I will take whole laptop apart and check plugs. Please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Additional Info: I have a Windows Server 2003 cd that I am TRYING to load onto new Hard Drive. This runs and then says unsuccessful because no Hard Drive detected.
Link to Toshiba Hard Drive purchased: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270309303954

I'm sure this has prolly been asked/answered before. I could not find it. I would be more than happy with links POSTED as responses to my issue.

Thanks in advance.
Your main board may be shot.. memory dumps are usually caused by memory issues like RAM, however at POST it should still detect the 2.5" IDE hard drive and spin up.

The last few times I have seen this issue come in through service they were caused by bad hard drive ( you already eliminated that ), weak power supply causing the system to become semifunctional and not spin up drive due to low voltage condition, and after an overheat of a laptop that someone fell asleep in bed with that burned up the main board when the COOLING vents were smothered in the blanket.Thanks for your quick response. I'm sorry but those aren't the answers I wanted to hear.

I wanted a quick and easy fix. I'm lazy.

So, what would be the solution to the other problems you mentioned? New power supply? or New Main board? Is a main board the same as a motherboard?

1--I've replaced power supplies in a Desktop before, are laptops similar?
2--Replacing a main board, Is that practical? Would it be better just to get a new machine?

Again thanks for your help.